


steel butterflies

by bluesgraywaren



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: F/F, Kissing, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, audrey's a pining mess, emma has a gay panic, they're young and they're in love!, this hurts! but it's gonna get so good we're gonna get that good wlw content, what happened before s1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 02:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18561799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesgraywaren/pseuds/bluesgraywaren
Summary: set before s1. emma's getting ready for a date and she's nervous about the prospect of kissing him, so she turns to audrey. mutual pining, then picks up in the second chapter once the killing is over and these girls can finally get some closure (and love.  and by closure no I don't mean neither of them have feelings for the other).





	steel butterflies

It’s around nine o’clock when the lights go out.

 

“ _Nooooo_ ,” Emma whines, reaching for her phone to shine the light on Audrey.“You _know_ how much I hate the dark.”

 

Audrey giggles at that, turning around the grab the lighter and flick it a few times under one of the vanilla Bath & Body Works candles Emma liked so much.“It’s okay, Em,” she says, voice tinkling with laughter as she sets the candle down and the tiny scrunch in Emma’s forehead dissipates.“It’s a storm, you big baby.”

 

Emma relaxes then, leaning back on her bed and glancing out the window where the storm’s raging.Audrey catches a glimpse of Emma’s profile highlighted by the dim warm glow, and a tug in her chest lets her keep looking for a little longer than necessary.

 

 _Emma_.

 

“Hmm?”

 

Audrey flinches then, curling up her knuckles on the pillow in her lap. _I didn’t mean to say that out loud-_

 

“Oh! Uh, nothing,” Audrey says.“Your hair got close to the candle.I didn’t want you to.You know.Be bald.”

 

“And officially become a big baby?” Emma says, a laugh escaping as she moves the candle away from her knee.“You’d think by thirteen I’ve gotten away from being a baby.”

 

Warmth spreads across Audrey’s cheeks then, and her face dips down to hide a bashful smile.“If anything, you’re old.Older than me, anyway.”

 

“Hey!” Emma says, putting her hand on Audrey’s knee and obliviously not feeling the full-body stiffness it’s inflicted on the other girl.“You’re only two months younger than me.You’re the baby.”

 

Audrey lets herself giggle then, the remote from the abandoned Buffy marathon still lying on her lap.Muscle memory makes her want to pick it up, but the view of Emma’s candlelit face is better than anything from a box set. 

 

Emma’s phone rings a second later, synths popping out of the speakers and making Audrey jump in surprise.The second she sees the name _Austin Mathis_ on the caller ID, though, the surprise fades away and is immediately replaced by the feeling of cold, calculated guilt. _That’s the guy Emma likes.Not you.She’s not gonna look at you like that.Ever.But if she would-_

 

“Hello?” Emma says, brushing her shiny hair over her shoulder in mock flirtation.She nudges Audrey then, knocking her out of her shame-induced stupor, and sends a grin her way.Audrey’s stomach does a little flip before it settles behind her heart, weakly smiling at Emma in the darkness.“Hey, Austin!”

 

Audrey reaches for her phone then, tilting the screen down to see 4 unread messages from Noah, and promptly puts the phone back down.She looks back up at Emma, warmth seemingly pouring over her extremities, and lets her hands settle on the pillow in her lap.Emma’s enthralled in the conversation with Austin, despite the fact that Audrey knows he’s a smelly neanderthal with a predisposition to overdosing on Axe body spray, but she doesn’t say anything.

 

“Next Thursday?” Emma says, smile so big it almost makes her eyes close.Audrey thinks she might be sick.“Yeah, I wanna see that one too.At the Zenith?Yeah…. I can meet you there.Okay, awesome.I gotta go now, power’s out,” she says, and the second the phone’s hung up, she lets out a squeal and grips Audrey’s shoulders in her ring-clad hands.

 

Audrey pushes down the sick feeling in her stomach, trying not to stiffen up at Emma’s sudden shoulder contact.“Looks like you’re going to have to love the smell of Axe, Em,” she says, giggling weakly.

 

“Hmm, maybe I will,” is Emma’s response and probably the worst thing she could’ve said, Audrey thinks.“Oh, he’s so cute.I’m so nervous.”

 

Audrey doesn’t really know about the _cute_ part, given the fact that last week she had seen Austin spill a blue Gatorade down his shirt in the middle of World History, but hey, what does she know.Maybe Emma’s into that. _Maybe I should start drinking blue Gatorade_ , Audrey thinks, smiling a little bit at the joke.

 

“Why are you nervous?” Audrey says, removing Emma’s bashful hands from her eyes.“He obviously likes you.You’re perfect, Em.No nervousness to be had.Unless he’s planning on _Carrie_ -ing you at the theater.”

 

“Oh, shut it!” Emma says, laughing and curling her knees into her chest.“You know that scares me! I really don’t think there’s any place you can set up pig’s blood in the Zenith theater, anyways.”

 

A warm fondness settles over Audrey. _She remembered what happens in Carrie,_ she thinks, and a sudden burst of warmth settles in her stomach. 

 

“I’m nervous because of the rumor.You know.The one about him and Shelby Smith,” Emma says, wringing her hands and whispering over the candlelight.“How they made out in Griffin Park, and stuff.”

 

Now the sick feeling’s back. 

 

“You’re… Nervous about kissing Austin?” Audrey says, and a tiny spark at the back of her brain has more than a couple suggestions as to how Emma could get more experience, but she squashes them down.This is her time to be a supportive friend.

 

Emma’s back to talking now, this time about the rumor in its entirety, and all Audrey can think about is the implication that Emma’s suggesting she _needs more experience_.

 

“But I heard from Cassie that Shelby said that he was okay at kissing, but what if I’m not?” Emma says, completely oblivious to the fact that Audrey’s thinking _how could anyone think you’d ever be anything but perfect at kissing, Em,_ and-

 

“Okay.Don’t freak out,” Emma says, and puts her hand on Audrey’s knee.“But I was thinking… What if we practiced?”

 

“What?” Audrey says, and it comes out as more of a strangled squeak than an actual question.“With each other?” _Oh no.Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no-_

 

“Yeah!” Emma says brightly, and any fears Audrey had about kissing Emma immediately disappear in the face of the situation.“So when it really counts, we know what to do.”

 

 _When it really counts_ is the sentence that Audrey’ll play over and over in her head until she’s shaking and crying and hoping her dad doesn’t hear anything when he opens the door to tell her goodnight.She wants it to count.She wants _Emma_.But she’s never going to say that.Emma wants _Austin_ , and Audrey’s so far from Austin that she prays her similarities with him could never overlap.But, for now…

 

“Okay, okay,” Audrey says, shifting a tiny bit closer to Emma and trying to pummel the butterflies that have taken over her stomach.“So… How do we do this?”

 

“Don’t be silly,” Emma says, pushing her hair over her shoulder again, and leaning closer to Audrey over the candle.“I think my head goes this way, and yours can go that way,” and they’re so close that Audrey feels like she’s going to either die or spontaneously combust, or both.And then Emma leans in.

 

Oh, _God._ She leans in too, and then her lips are lightly brushing against Emma’s, and then they’re shifting so that they can get a better angle, and then-

 

 _Emma._ Audrey knows, logically, that this is in some way harmful to her masochistic disposition of a crush, but she’s going to savor the moment for as long as she can.Heat settles behind her navel, and her eyes are blissfully closed, and she reaches up and settles one of her hands on Emma’s neck.She’s pretty sure she hasn’t felt this empowered and enlightened and absolutely _incredible_ in her whole life, and when Audrey’s hand settles on lightly fisting in Emma’s white, lacy shirt, Emma shivers and lets out a tiny sigh.

 

A thousand voices in Audrey are screaming, all at once, and above all she’s unbelievably proud that she’s not only _kissing Emma Duval_ , but that _Emma just sighed.Emma just sighed into my mouth-_

 

And then Emma pulls away, and just like that, it’s over.Audrey’s sure that her slow ability to look back up at Emma is causing her cheeks to be bright red, and Emma’s face is flushed, or maybe it’s just the candle or what Audrey’s brain wants her to see.But Emma’s looking at her with the most beautiful expression on, one that Audrey could take as wanting to kiss _again_ , even, and the tingling in Audrey’s arms and legs are close to overpowering.

 

“ _Audrey_ ,” Emma says, and Audrey’s dreamed for years about that _Audrey_ , about the husky voice Emma’s using to say her name, about the reason why Emma would say her name like that.

 

“You’re really good at that,” Emma says, and Audrey grins and shrugs her shoulders, unable to conceal her pride.And then, a second later, the power comes back on.

 

The lights suddenly reappearing and the television blasting the volume louder than it was before shatter the moment, and Audrey’s quickly fussing to turn the volume back down. 

 

When she looks back at Emma, the blonde girl’s face is almost unreadable.It’s as if she’s mentally going through some sort of long process, but she’s not looking at Audrey when she does it, and when she’s about to ask what’s wrong, Emma speaks, voice slightly weak.

 

“Oh, my mom just texted,” Emma says, looking at her phone with an expression that could be described as anything but blank.“Your dad’s here.”

 

Audrey feels like Emma just slammed the door of her car and drove off without her, and she’s trailing in the wake of the dust.She wants to ask Emma if she felt anything during the kiss, even though she obviously did, what with the moaning into Audrey’s mouth, and all.But, instead, all that Audrey offers is an, “Okay, cool, thanks for having me over,” and trying not to cry as she picks up her phone and blows out the candle. 

 

The last thing she sees is Emma’s face, glimmering in the room’s light and obscured by the scented smoke, giving her a tight-lipped smile as she walks out the door.

 

Emma doesn’t really text her the rest of the week.The date with Austin passes, and all Audrey gets is a quick text saying that it went well.She’s still kept up thinking about the kiss between her and Emma, and how there was no resolve in it, and sometimes she cries about it and thinks about tracing Emma’s collarbone with her fingertips, and that’s enough to fall asleep.

 

The days of Emma-free contact spin away into weeks, then months, and then she’s not even seeing Emma unless she’s right next to Nina Patterson and her cronies, and everything that Nina’s ever done to Audrey that she’d told Emma about flashes in her mind for a second, but there’s nothing she can do.Emma doesn’t care that Nina once shoved Audrey in the hallway and called her a dyke, and Emma doesn’t care that if Nina found out that her and Audrey kissed, Emma’d be eliminated from the friend group.But none of that matters.

 

And then the months turn into years, and Emma’s given up on all talk with Audrey unless it’s a quick birthday message on Facebook.Audrey tries not to think about Emma, lest she feel like she’s drowning in a pool of molten lead, but Emma always comes up.The fondness in her chest hardens, and the butterflies turn into steel, and Audrey gets angrier.

 

Then there’s Piper, and then Kieran, and then time seems to stop again.

**Author's Note:**

> second chapter will be up within a week!


End file.
